PokeL-ARecomp

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PokeL-ARecomp (PLA Recomp) turns Pokémon Legends: Arceus Nintendo Switch code into a native 64-bit Windows and Linux program. The game's ARM64 machine code is translated ahead-of-time (AOT) into C and compiled natively for x86-64. The Nintendo Switch OS kernel, filesystem, audio and Maxwell NVN graphics are reimplemented directly on top of Vulkan.

No emulator runs while you play. The game executes natively on your CPU and GPU.

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Features

Performance & Engine

• 30 FPS (recommended) or 60 FPS (⚠️ experimental): 30 FPS runs everything at the Switch's intended speed. At 60 FPS camera and movement keep their speed through dynamic delta-time pacing, but parts of the game count frames instead of time and run twice as fast: thrown food disappears before wild Pokémon can eat it (#9), and menus, dialogue and some effects are faster. These are known, long-standing limits of Pokémon Legends: Arceus at 60 FPS — no 60 FPS patch for this game (emulator cheats, FPSLocker) has fixed them — not new bugs of this port. Switch to 30 FPS to feed Pokémon. The frame rate is unsteady in the open world (around 40–50 fps on the test machine), with brief hitches the first time each shader is compiled.
• Frame Generation (2x): shows an extra frame between every two game frames — 60 on screen with the game at 30 FPS (its logic stays at the Switch's speed) or 120 at 60 FPS. The extra frame is a blend of its two neighbours (no motion estimation yet): smoother in slow camera pans, with ghosting on fast movement. Works on any GPU.
• HUD Decoupling: Isolates 2D UI elements (minimap, health gauges, reticles, text) via hdr_snapshot to eliminate ghosting artifacts during Frame Generation.
• Explicit VSync Modes: Choose between Off (Low Latency / Mailbox), On (VSync / 60 Hz - FIFO), or Off (Unlimited / Immediate) with instant swapchain recreation.
• VSync: Off (Unlimited): presents without waiting for the display (lowest latency, may tear), but always capped at the chosen 30 or 60 FPS — running faster made the frame-counting systems (menus, thrown food) faster still.
• Internal Resolution Scaling: From 25% up to 4x native 1080p (4K UHD) with Dynamic Resolution scaling, plus a 720p (Switch handheld) option, the default of the Light profile, for Steam Deck, integrated GPUs and entry-level cards.
• CPU / GPU overlap (automatic): the CPU builds the next frame while the GPU draws the current one. It is turned off automatically on CPUs with 8 threads or fewer and on AMD GPUs, where it crashed in the past (override in F1 > Advanced Video > Compatibility, or with LARECOMP_GPU_OVERLAP=1 / 0).
• High Core-Count Scaling (Intel Xeon & Multi-Core CPUs): Dynamic worker thread scaling (up to 8 parallel texture deswizzling threads on 16-24+ thread CPUs) eliminating texture streaming stutter.
• Dedicated GPU Memory Unlocking (Intel Arc & High-VRAM GPUs): Full 3.1 GB physical pool unlocked for GPUs with dedicated VRAM (such as the 12 GB Intel Arc B580 Battlemage), preventing memory thrashing.

Graphics & Upscaling

• Separated Options Menu: Dedicated Video (display, resolution, fps, vsync) and Advanced Video (XeSS, FSR, Frame Gen, shadows, AO, SSR, GI) tabs for clean customization.

• Native In-Engine Draw Distance: Adjustable entity and vegetation rendering radius in C code without external mods (Standard 1x, High 2.5x, Ultra 4x). Wild Pokémon and NPC spawn distance up to 150m, trees visible up to 800m.

• Hisui Color Enhancement & Tonemapper: High-fidelity Vulkan presentation post-processing filters (Hisui Vibrant and Hisui Cinematic) removing the washed-out gray haze with zero CPU overhead.

• Intel XeSS (Xe Super Sampling): AI neural upscaling accelerated by hardware XMX engines on Intel Arc GPUs (Ultra Performance to Native AA).

• AMD FidelityFX FSR 1, FSR 2 (temporal), and SMAA anti-aliasing.

• Contrast-Adaptive Sharpening (RCAS): Real-time image clarity adjustment.

• Custom Shading & Lighting: Screen-space ambient occlusion (XeGTAO), water reflections (SSR), screen-space indirect lighting (SSGI), and high-resolution shadow mapping (up to 4x).

• HDR Display Output: scRGB / HDR10 support with peak brightness tuning.

• HD Texture Pack Loader: Direct loading from textures/hd/.

• Ultrawide 21:9 / 32:9 (Hor+) — 🧪 Experimental: with F1 > Video > Aspect ratio > Unlocked (ultrawide) the image fills any window shape: wider screens show more of the world at the sides, with no stretching. The window's shape is detected automatically. Tested on a real 32:9 monitor in the open world, but battles, cutscenes, interiors and menus are not fully tested yet — bugs may occur (objects popping in at the screen edges, effects or UI out of place). Please report them in issue #1. Original 16:9 keeps the game's framing with side bars.

• Field of view slider: F1 > Video > Field of view (45–90) widens the game's own camera. Scenery, particles, torch fire, Pokémon eyes and alert marks and the damage vignette all follow it, and the title screen keeps its framing.

Stability

• Command lists are protected from being overwritten: the game hands its command memory out again much sooner than this port can translate it. Lists are now kept in the port's own memory until they are translated. This fixed the crashes in Jubilife's Floaro Main Street (#7, #12).
• Offline network service: features that try to go online (for example Connect to the internet in the menu) are told the Switch is offline instead of crashing the game.
• Diagnostic log: lasrecomp.log shows game speed vs real time ([speed], every 10 s) and every setting changed in game ([settings] changed), which helps with bug reports.

Saves & Safety

• Automatic Save Backup Rotation: Creates timestamped backups in save/backups/main_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.bak whenever the game commits save data, retaining the 10 most recent copies.

Tools & Utilities

• PokeL-Extractor (Standalone ROM Tool): Bundled single-file GUI & CLI utility based on LibHac (versioned independently). Extracts Nintendo Switch dumps (.nsp / .xci) directly into the native directory tree (exefs/ and recursive romfs/) with automatic BKTR patch and DLC layering, ready for instant play.

Controls & Input

• Any modern gamepad via SDL3: Xbox, DualShock 4, DualSense, Nintendo Switch Pro Controller, Steam Deck.
• Button icons that follow your bindings: Xbox and PlayStation icons show the button you actually press, whether your controller is mapped by position (Switch layout) or by letter (bind_pad_a = south: Xbox A / cross confirms). Changes apply from the next start.
• Full Keyboard & Mouse support with smooth mouse-directed camera and customizable keybindings.
• Dynamic controller button glyphs matching your active controller layout.

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Supported Version

Game	Title ID	Target Version	main Build ID
Pokémon Legends: Arceus	01001F5010DFA000	1.1.1 (update v262144)	AEE8F150DDA1B5A8

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Requirements

Component	Minimum	Recommended
Operating System	Windows 10/11 64-bit or Linux x86-64 (glibc 2.35+)	Windows 11 / Modern Linux
Processor	x86-64 with AVX2 (4 Cores)	Intel Xeon E5 / Core i5/i7/i9 or AMD Ryzen (8+ Cores)
Graphics Card	Vulkan 1.3 compatible GPU (4 GB VRAM)	Intel Arc B580 (12 GB) / RTX 3060+ / RX 6600+
System Memory	8 GB RAM	16 GB+ RAM
Storage	~12 GB free space	SSD / NVMe

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Quick Start (Playing)

1. Download the latest release from the Releases page (PokeL-ARecomp-windows-x64.zip for Windows, or .AppImage for Linux).
2. Extract the archive into a writable folder (e.g. C:\Games\PokeL-ARecomp).
3. Prepare your game files:
   • Base game (.nsp or .xci), the 1.1.1 update (.nsp), and your prod.keys dumped from your console.
4. Launch PokeL-ARecomp.exe (or ./plarecomp.AppImage).
5. In the start screen, choose your game folder and click Set up the game.
6. The initial static recompilation takes 10 to 25 minutes depending on your CPU core count (this occurs only once).
7. Click Play and enjoy exploring Hisui!

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Standalone ROM Extractor (PokeL-Extractor)

Bundled with every release is PokeL-Extractor (PokeL-Extractor.exe), a standalone Nintendo Switch ROM analysis and extraction utility built with LibHac and C# / .NET 9.

• Recursive Directory Scanning: Scans entire directories and subfolders for .nsp, .nsz, .xci, and .xcz files.
• Automatic Title ID & CNMT Detection: Identifies whether a dump is a Base Game, an Update (such as v262144), or DLC, even if files have been arbitrarily renamed.
• Switch Game Icon Extraction: Reads embedded JPEG/PNG icons directly from Control NCAs and displays them in the UI.
• RomFS & ExeFS Extraction: Merges BKTR base and update patches automatically into clean directories ready for PokeL-ARecomp.
• Real-time Progress & Telemetry: Reports elapsed time, transfer speed (MB/s), estimated time remaining (ETA), and line-by-line logs.
• Dual GUI & CLI Modes: Run interactively with the modern dark GUI or automate via terminal (PokeL-Extractor.exe --scan <folder> --export <out>).

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Controls

Keyboard	Action	Gamepad
W / A / S / D	Move player	Left Stick
Mouse Movement	Camera control	Right Stick
Left Click	Throw Pokéball / Attack (ZR)	ZR
Right Click	Aim (ZL)	ZL
Space / Shift	Dodge Roll / Sprint (Y / B)	Y / B
F1 / Esc	Settings Menu	+ / −
F10	Save Screenshot (screenshots/)	-
F11	Fullscreen toggle	-

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Credits & Acknowledgements

This project stands on the shoulders of giants. We express our deepest gratitude to the upstream authors and open-source pioneers whose breakthroughs made PokeL-ARecomp possible:

• Peiikai: Creator of LAS Recomp, who invented the static recompilation architecture, ARM64-to-C ahead-of-time code translation pipeline, fast-memory execution model, and Maxwell-to-SPIR-V shader translation.
• Hexveil404: Creator of PokeZ-ARecomp, who extended LAS Recomp to modern Pokémon engine architectures, developed custom Switch OS HLE services, and proved that full Switch Pokémon titles can run natively on PC.
• fabioschmidt01 & Antigravity: Architecture, Intel Xeon multi-threading, Intel Arc B580 tuning, Intel XeSS integration, HUD decoupling, standalone extractor tool, and the Pokémon Legends: Arceus & Violet ports.
• didslima: Ultrawide (21:9 / 32:9) support (#6): the Hor+ / Vert+ camera fix in the game's own projection builder, the HUD kept in its 16:9 layout, the automated projection tests, and validation on a real 32:9 monitor.
• Thealexbarney: Creator of LibHac, powering our standalone PokeL-Extractor ROM analysis and BKTR patch merger.
• Ryujinx Project: Exceptional behavioral reference and documentation for Nintendo Switch OS kernel and Maxwell NVN graphics behavior.
• Open-source libraries: SDL3, FFmpeg, Dear ImGui, Vulkan Memory Allocator, Shaderc, XeGTAO, AMD FidelityFX, Intel XeSS.

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Legal Notice

PokeL-ARecomp is a fan-created research and preservation project. It is not endorsed, affiliated with, or sponsored by Nintendo, Game Freak, Creatures Inc., or The Pokémon Company. Pokémon and Pokémon Legends: Arceus are registered trademarks of their respective owners. No proprietary Nintendo code, game binaries, textures, models, or font files are distributed in this repository.